House District 113JOAN COHEN (D)WWW.JOANCOHEN.ORG| A Democrat who has never before held public office, Cohen is a former attorney who has worked with the Maine Chamber of Commerce and the Maine Medical Association. She has been involved in Portland schools, serving as president of the Lyseth Elementary School PTA and with the Portland Educational Partnership.TOP PRIORITY “Growing Maine’s economy, including facilitating the development of alternative energy sources. To succeed in the 21st century, Maine must develop and invest in a comprehensive plan to achieve sustainable prosperity, including business innovation, job creation, and environmental stewardship. Maine must become a leader in creating innovative strategies to reducing oil consumption and fostering ‘green industries’ that not only reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, but also stimulate economic growth, new jobs, and a cleaner, healthier environment. ... I support the Brookings Institution's study Charting Maine’s Future that lays out a plan to fund and invest in these goals.”

JEFFREY MARTIN (R)WWW.JEFFMARTIN2008.COM| A Republican who owns a property-management company, Martin has pledged not to raise taxes on Mainers and Maine businesses; he also wants to improve the school-funding formula to get more money for Portland.TOP PRIORITY “We are facing a $500 million structural deficit. The best way to create jobs and position our economy to take advantage of the recovery is to reduce spending and not raise taxes. Our government has increased [spending] 43 percent over a time when our incomes have increased 18 percent. ... It’s time to take a hard look at the programs we have and prioritize what we spend on, and fund it well. For programs that don’t work, we need to cut them.”

House District 114DAVID FERNALD (R)FERNALD4PORTLAND.COM | Fernald, a Bowdoin graduate and former high-tech businessman, is a Republican who advocates for tax incentives to lure companies (and jobs) to Maine. He supports offshore drilling for oil, and reforming Maine’s health-insurance regulations to bring down costs and encourage more insurers to do business here.TOP PRIORITY Job creation.

PETER STUCKEY (D)
Stuckey, a Democrat, is a longtime community organizer and service-provider who worked at the East End Children’s Center and then at the People’s Regional Opportunity Program (PROP) for a combined 36 years. He places progressive social-service issues at the center of his campaign.TOP PRIORITY “Make sure our safety net is in place and sufficient to make sure all Maine citizens can stay warm, fed, and healthy this winter. We must make sure that federal, state, and local efforts are accessible and well-coordinated to ensure we make the best use of all available resources and that no one falls through a crack.”

House District 115DONNA BENDICKSEN (R)
Bendicksen, a former healthcare worker, cites the erosion of personal liberties as one of her primary concerns. She’s a political activist who organized for independent presidential candidate Ron Paul; she believes there is a lack of transparency and long-term planning in Augusta.TOP PRIORITY “A law requiring all future bills submitted to the Legislature to show where in the Constitution the authority is found to create the new law being proposed, along with a clear long-term forecast of the economic outcome such a law would create.”

Steve Lovejoy

MICHAEL HILTZ (G)HILTZ2008.ORG | Hiltz is a Green Independent, a former Marine, and a registered nurse. He supports universal single-payer healthcare, wants to turn Maine into the “Silicon Valley” of green technology, and has collected endorsements from several big-left organizations such as the Maine AFL-CIO and the League of Young Voters.TOP PRIORITY “A universal single-payer healthcare plan so that we can phase out Dirigo.”

STEVE LOVEJOY (D)STEVELOVEJOY.COM | Democrat Lovejoy is a business professor at the University of Maine in Augusta with a background in finance and economic development. The Portland native stresses the connection between education and job creation.TOP PRIORITY “Try and improve the school funding formula to account for Portland’s status as a service center.”

House District 116KEN CAPRON (R)
Capron, a/k/a the “contrarian” who runs the WatchDog Maine Web site, is a Republican who wants to minimize government spending, lower taxes, and put more research dollars into hovercraft as green transportation.TOP PRIORITY “I would propose to work on and enact an energy plan for Maine that would accomplish more than just energy savings. [Its] goal should not leave us in the same state of economic dependency on big oil, big gas, or even big wood. Thus we would be forced to focus on free energy sources such as wind and solar. And since we are short on jobs and businesses, we should bring into Maine some companies which build wind and solar solutions and thus create more jobs and improve the economy.”

They wanna be governor In our typical Portland Phoenix format, here’s a one-by-one look at all the folks who claim they want to be Maine’s next governor. (In our book, anyone crazy enough to say they want that job probably has done something to karmically deserve it.)

A mighty wind This past Earth Day, President Barack Obama, speaking at an Iowa wind-turbine factory, delivered a gusty peroration. "The nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy," he said. "America can be that nation. America must be that nation."

Break like the wind I felt like a voyeur. There was Fred Hardy of New Sharon crawling into bed with — gawd, I can’t look! — Al Gore.

Starting to clear Maine’s broadband backlog The biggest obstacle between Mainers and more, better, faster broadband Internet access is actually a very basic one: there's a lack of information about what kind of Internet service is already available where.

Windshift Harley Lee and I are not friends. The only time we’ve met was a couple of years ago in a Carrabassett Valley bar, where I told him the world would be a better place if somebody poisoned his drink.

The Mighty Wind The Rhode Island recession, among the worst in the country, has become something of a national curiosity: how could such a little state be in such big trouble?

ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE | July 24, 2014 When three theater companies, all within a one-hour drive of Portland, choose to present the same Shakespeare play on overlapping dates, you have to wonder what about that particular show resonates with this particular moment.

CHECKING IN: THE NEW GUARD AND THE WRITER'S HOTEL | July 11, 2014 Former Mainer Shanna McNair started The New Guard, an independent, multi-genre literary review, in order to exalt the writer, no matter if that writer was well-established or just starting out.

NO TAR SANDS | July 10, 2014 “People’s feelings are clear...they don’t want to be known as the tar sands capitol of the United States."